AFRICAN UNION PEACE AND SECURITY COUNCIL CO-CHAIR’S BRIEFING ON THE INFORMAL MEETING BETWEEN THE AUPSC AND THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL TO THE MEDIA/PRESS, NEW YORK, 23 MAY 2016

The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AUPSC) and the Members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) held an Informal Meeting, today in the morning, 23 May 2016, in New York, United States of America, ahead of their formal 10th Annual Joint Consultative Meeting. Ambassador Mmamosadinyana Punkie Josephine Molefe, Chairperson of the AUPSC for May 2016, and Ambassador Amr Abdelllatif Aboulatta, President of the UNSC for May 2016, co-chaired the Informal Meeting. The objective of the Informal Meeting, which marked the 10th anniversary of the annual AUPSC/UNSC consultations, was for the two sides to exchange views on crucial matters concerning their partnership and how to further improve it, including bringing innovations, in the process.

This interactive session took place against the background of an informal dialogue of the two Councils held in in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 23 January 2016, to exchange views on Burundi and Somalia, following the visit by the Security Council to Burundi.

The Informal Meeting provided an opportunity for the two Councils to look back to 2007, the year of the launching of their partnership, and to take stock of what they have been able to achieve to date, lessons learned and the challenges at hand. More specifically, the discussions during the Informal Meeting focused on the current state of the partnership and the way forward, as well as on reviews undertaken by the UN on its peace building architecture, the UN peace operations and UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. In this respect, the two Councils underscored the need for effective implementation of the outcomes of these reviews.

The two Councils acknowledged that, whilst their partnership has generated some notable achievements, thereby contributing to preventing and resolving conflicts in Africa, there are still major challenges to be addressed in order to ensure the effectiveness of the partnership in the area of promoting peace, security and stability in Africa. Notably, key issues such as negotiation and setting of the agenda for the annual joint consultative meetings, and negotiation over the content of joint communiqués, continue to be thorny issues between

the two Councils. Accordingly, the two sides expressed their willingness to listen to each other and to jointly continue to innovate and make improvements on these and other vital aspects of the Partnership.

They also expressed their willingness to convene more informal meetings with a view to both, strengthening the Partnership and to find solutions to some of those issues, including those that are seemingly perceived to be taboos within the context of the annual joint consultative meetings. In this context, the AUPSC underscored the imperative of the two Councils to opening joint discussion on issues that have remained taboo, including the situation in Western Sahara, which for Africa, is fundamentally an issue of decolonization; illicit financial flows, illegal exploitation of natural resources, illegal and clandestine supply of arms to belligerents and money laundering, which are issues that continue to contribute in fomenting violent conflicts and instability in Africa.

Finally, the two Councils emphasized the need to ensure follow-ups on the implementation of commitments that they have entered into in previous annual joint consultative meetings, and to continue doing so for commitments that may be made in future annual joint consultative meetings.

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